1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method of retrieving information from a plurality of databases in which information about biological substances, such as sequences of bases and proteins, are stored, by associating the databases with one another and thus clarifying the connections among them.
2. Background Art
Databases storing information about biological substances exist all over the world and are available to the public on the Web. Biology researchers can take advantage of those databases for their own studies (see Non-patent document 1). Open databases related to gene information and protein information have their own unique registration numbers (to be hereafter referred to as IDs), which are in many cases assigned to the genes and proteins stored in the databases. So far, when a researcher searches open databases for his own data to retrieve data from the databases, it has been necessary for him to relate his own data with the ID of the particular database using some kind of means. According to the most typical method for that purpose, a homology search is carried out between the base sequence or protein sequence the researcher possesses and the base sequence or protein sequence stored in the database, such that they can be associated with one another.
This can be carried out in two ways. One has the researcher search the open databases on the Web for his own data one-by-one. The other involves the researcher downloading the data of the databases on the Web into his own facility one-by-one and then searching the data, in order to avoid the chances of information leakage that could happen during a search via the Internet. FIG. 21 schematically shows a search system according to the prior art whereby the data is downloaded from databases on the Web. A user 218 downloads files 219 one by one from an open database 211 via the Internet 212 to a facility 217 of the user. The user 218 then carries out a search on the thus downloaded files 219.
(Non-patent document 1) Baxebanis, A. D: Nucl. Acids Res., 28:1-10, 2000, “Genetics Databases” (Bishop M. J. ed.), Academic Press, Cambridge, 1999.